Just Label It News Roundup 10/13

This week we learned of thousands of complaints about dicamba damaging crops and more troubles with superweeds. U.S. farmers aren’t alone with agrichemical woes: At least 50 Indian farmers were reported to suffer from pesticide poisoning this week. Tyson poultry has pleaded guilty to contaminating Missouri waterways resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 fish. Monsanto lobbyists have been banned from entering the European parliament after the multinational corporation refused to attend a parliamentary hearing into allegations of regulatory interference. Also in the news, drone footage exposed disturbing imagery of factory farms in a new investigation.

With thousands of complaints of crop damage across more than 3 million acres in 24 states — including some 100 complaints in Iowa — a longtime University of Missouri plant researcher is calling it possibly the greatest pesticide-caused crop damage in U. S. history.

The culprit is the notoriously drift-prone pesticide dicamba that was supposed to be the answer to weeds’ escalating resistance to the world’s most popular pesticide — Monsanto’s glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest chicken producer, has taken “full responsibility” for accidentally releasing an acidic chemical used in chicken feed into the city of Monett, Missouri’s wastewater treatment system that resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 fish.

Nearly all animals raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. live in factory farms—facilities that treat animals as mere production units and show little regard for the natural environment or public health. Instead of creating widgets, these factories confine, mutilate and disassemble animals who feel pain and pleasure just like our dogs and cats.